Lost in Time | Dean x OFC | Chapter One
Pairing: Dean Winchester x OFC Series Summary: Sam and Dean answer Jody’s call about a ghost wandering in the woods, calling for help, wearing period clothing. Thinking they’re taking a break from the end of the world and handling a run of the mill haunting, they hit the road, unaware their world is about to be turned upside down. Genre: Time travel AU, WW2, Romance, Angst Warnings: None for this part. Chapter Summary: In 1942, we see Eva get reassigned to the paratroops and get an insight into her espionage work in France. In present day, Eva, Dean, and Sam try to figure out what to do next. A/N: There is very little Sam and Dean in this chapter - so sorry! Please don’t skip it though, this chapter gives some really important backstory for Eva. This features some dialogue from an infamous Band of Brothers scene. I don’t own it, and it also doesn’t quite happen in the same place/time as I’m using it here. Just go with it.
Masterlist / Prologue
October, 1942
The night air is cold, ripping through her clothing and freezing her skin. The sound of her breathing is all she can hear above the pounding of her heart as she scans the trees, trying to decide if she can see any movement.
Her commanding officer is on her left, and makes eye contact as they creep ever closer. A series of hand signals follow, and they move out, into the treeline.
They appear to be moving as one unit. Their footsteps are silent. Her adrenaline spikes as she hears the snap of a twig, and they’re all crouching instantly, Captain McNamara’s fist in the air in a silent message to stop.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees a flash of movement. Reaching for her clicker, she presses once, then twice. Click. Click-click.
No response.
Quickly, her squad moves in. Like one, they rise from their crouches, rifles aimed, and the movement on the other side of the trees stops.
“Jesus Christ.” Someone from the “enemy” on the other side mutters.
McNamara sighs, moving into the neutral area ahead to address the other company in the training exercise. “Captain. You’ve just been killed, along with ninety-five percent of your company.”
She drops her rifle to a more neutral position, digging in her pocket for a cigarette. If her mother could see her now… well. That’s a road she doesn’t care to go down just yet.
McNamara talks to the other Captain and takes a few notes from the field exercise before sending them back to the assembly area. Before they move out, he takes a few steps in her direction.
“Sergeant Simmons.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good scouting. I’m going to recommend you for a promotion before we get our marching orders. Hopefully only a few more weeks and we’ll know if we’re going to see some real action.”
She feels flushed from the praise. “Thank you, sir.”
Later, she’s sitting with the rest of her company in an intelligence lecture, outlining the biggest operation they’re likely ever to do.
“Pathfinders will go in ahead of the Infantry and clear the way. We need clear drop zones scouted and marked. Enemy presence in this area is heavy, so we’re getting help from British Intelligence.”
Afterwards, she’s pulled aside by the Captain and his S2 - intelligence officer Lieutenant Matthews.
“Simmons, I hate to do this to you--” McNamara says, and her stomach sinks.
“Not again.” She mutters.
He actually looks a little chagrined. “It’s not my choice. You’re being transferred.”
She straightens. “What?” The promotion she’d been told about, but not the possibility of a transfer. It shouldn’t surprise her - everything is being put towards the invasion - it’s only natural they’d want as many intelligence officers as possible, but she’s already split time between the OSS and the Pathfinders.
The churning in her gut makes her frustrated. This is the third time the rug has been pulled out from under her, just when she finally feels like she’s gotten settled in a unit where the men didn’t leer at her or laugh at everything she said.
She finally feels like she has some respect, and now it’s being taken away. Again.
“You’re still going to be with the Airborne, but you’re needed elsewhere.”
She doesn’t say anything, she just nods.
This time it’s Matthews who speaks. “Follow me.”
Inside Battalion HQ, she offers a hasty salute to other officers and takes a seat when it’s offered to her. That’s the other thing she’s learned in the Army - always sit down when you have the opportunity.
“Simmons, this is Lieutenant Nixon. Newly promoted S-2 for Easy Company.”
“Lewis Nixon, 506th Parachute Infantry,” the man clarifies, extending his hand. “Nice to meet you.”
He looks familiar to her, but she thinks it’s just his type. Clean shaven, strong jaw, dark hair and intelligent eyes. Permanent smirk on his face. This is the type of man who is used to things going his way. Ivy Leaguer, she suspects.
She also suspects he’s giving her the same treatment - trying to figure her out and figure out who she is.
“What exactly is the assignment here, sir?” She asks, “Apologies for speaking so bluntly, but my understanding was the paratroopers are a volunteer unit, like the Pathfinders.”
When her time with the OSS ended and she needed somewhere else to go, she properly enlisted in the Army and joined the Pathfinders. The work was similar, and her skill with languages helped her tremendously.
“Officially, you’re going to be the newest intelligence officer for Easy, taking Lieutenant Nixon’s place with his unit as he’s been promoted to Battalion.”
“Unofficially, you’re going to drop ahead of everyone else with the Pathfinders. There’s a contact on the ground you need to meet. Completing this objective is imperative to making this mission a success. They’ve got information on the location of some heavy enemy guns, and we need to know where they are before we start.”
Her hands shake slightly. Gee, she thinks, no pressure.
“Your previous work was well done,” Nixon says, looking over a manila folder in his hands. “How long were you in France before?”
Eva swallows heavily, the memories flooding back. “Long enough.” She says quietly.
.
Eva slips in the back door of the cafe, pulling her hair out from under her collar. There’s no music, not tonight.
She hears raised voices in the dining room, and takes a deep breath, trying to calm her adrenaline. She’s been in France for six months, and still the feeling of seeing SS soldiers in uniform puts her on edge.
“Eva.” Her boss peeks around the corner. “Table two. Make it quick, and I’ll forget you were late.”
Tying her apron around her waist, she heads out into the dining area, her heart still seizing at the sight of them. “Bonjour,” she says demurely, approaching the table.
“Ah,” one of the taller men, a Captain, greets her. “Fraulein. You haven’t been here the last two nights.” His English is stilted.
“Visiting my grandmother, she lives in the country. Can I get you a drink?”
They order wine. It’s always wine, and they get the best, even though the entire country is suffering on rations. She hates that they know her name. It makes her palms itch. But still, she does what she’s supposed to do.
She doesn’t let on that she speaks German. She keeps her face blank. Whatever she hears, she files away carefully. She never writes anything down, not anymore. One too many close calls that had her running taught her that.
Her current assignment is the most important. Where are the enemy positions? What positions are most vulnerable to a potential Allied invasion?
Most of all - what else are the SS doing with the railways besides moving equipment?
In truth, she’s anxious to get back to the Army. It’s more her speed. She wants to be real help on the ground when the invasion starts. But, as one of the few women in the service, she blends in. That, paired with her language skills, lends itself to her many personas, and it’s why she’s shuffled back and forth between undercover work for the OSS and actual training with her unit. No one suspects this particular persona can read a map, or memorize coordinates, or speak three languages.
No one suspects that she’s already been overseas for two years and had a year of training in Canada before that. No one suspects that before she was Eva again, she was Emilie, training the Free French to fight back after the Nazis arrived.
No, no one suspects her.
Not this persona, a simple girl living in France with her aunt and uncle and waiting tables. Being up close and personal with these monsters when she knows what they’re capable of… this is the first time she’s considered her own mortality.
If they ever find out she’s American, she’s certain they’ll kill her.
She works the rest of her shift in silence. She’s quiet, she’s polite, and she listens. Always listening.
.
Lieutenant Nixon looks… impressed? Surprised? She’s a little offended. After all, she wouldn’t have been chosen for this if they thought she was useless.
“We could use another translator.” He says, finally.
“That’s it?” She asks incredulously.
His eyebrows raise. She flushes - she didn’t mean to speak out of turn. “Sir, due respect, but I’ve been in this war longer than the United States has. I can do more.”
A small smile curls his lips. “Let’s finish your parachute training first before we give you a rifle.”
Captain McNamara clears his throat. “There’s a Jeep outside to take you both to Aldbourne.”
Eva says nothing, she just nods, and snaps to attention, giving one last salute to the man who has been her mentor since she joined the Pathfinders. She’s really loath to leave his command, especially to join a group of men who she’s sure haven’t seen a woman in the last year.
She has no choice, though. If this is what she has to endure to carry out her duty, then that’s what she’ll do.
.
Present day
Eva’s head hurts. She’s in the backseat of an unfamiliar vehicle with two unfamiliar men. Every instinct in her body is screaming at her to get out of the car as quickly as she can and get away from here.
What they’ve told her can’t possibly be true. It can’t. She must be-- well, she’s either lost her mind, or she’s dead. That’s the only explanation.
The older man -- Dean -- keeps turning slightly to look at her over his shoulder. She wishes he would just keep his eyes on the road. She, on the other hand, doesn’t even want to look out the window. All it does is remind her that she’s not supposed to be here.
Things are so different.
She chokes back a sob as the reality of her situation sinks in. Time travel isn’t possible. And even if it was, why her? She can’t even pinpoint the last moment she remembers being in 1944. She can’t remember what she was doing before she was here.
They pull into a roadside motel just after midnight. Eva is immediately on edge again.
It’s not being alone with two men, really. She’s been sleeping in barracks and various billet houses with men for over three years at this point and has learned to live with the lack of privacy. It’s the fact that she trusts those men, her brothers.
She doesn’t know Sam and Dean.
She waits outside the car for them to go inside the small office and get two rooms. She wonders if they expected her to stay in the same room as them, but she wasn’t going to let that happen. Especially when she’s unarmed and still trying to get her bearings.
Inside the room, she’s still barely said a word. They’re looking at her cautiously.
“Do you…” Sam asks, “... are you hungry?”
She shrugs. “Not really. I feel a bit sick.”
“Time traveling almost 80 years into the future will do that.” Dean mutters.
Eva actually laughs, but it sounds hysterical, even to her own ears. “Well, you’re not speaking German, so I guess not everything turned out so bad.”
Dean opens his mouth, but Sam cuts him off. “No!”
Dean and Eva both look startled.
“You can’t tell her anything, Dean. It could-- it could mess up the past.”
“This isn’t The Butterfly Effect.”
“It could be.” Sam insists. “If we change anything… Dean, it could literally change the world. We have to get her back to 1944 and fast, because if she’s supposed to be there for--” He stops himself.
“I’m just one person.” Eva says, her voice uncharacteristically small.
Sam smiles. “If we’ve learned one thing, it’s that everyone plays a role.”
“I still don’t understand any of this. How you found me, what you were going to do… you said something--”
Dean cuts her off. “There’s time for that. But-- for now, we need to get back home where we have some time and space to think.”
“I’m still not quite convinced that any of this is real, you know.” Eva says, almost resigned. She has no idea what to believe. “Why should I trust you? Believe anything you say?”
“Do you have any other ideas on how to get back to ‘44?” Dean asks.
“I suppose one of you could hit me over the head and see if that does the trick.”
They look taken aback, and she blinks.
“It was a joke.” Sighing, she turns on her side on the bed and closes her eyes. “Might as well get some rest.” Quieter, “I can’t remember the last time I slept in a real bed.”
With her eyes closed, she can’t see Dean watching her carefully, the wheels turning. He has no idea why she’s here, or what will happen if they don’t get her back where she belongs. He just knows that they dealt with Hitler coming back from the dead once, and they’re not about to do it again.
.
Chapter two
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Endnotes: The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was composed of almost 13,000 Americans who operated as spies and Intelligence from 1942 to 1945. They were codebreakers, they planted false information to mislead the Germans, and, as a fun tie-in to the Airborne for the sake of this story, often parachuted into enemy territory to blow up bridges and rail lines. One third of them were women!
The first paratroopers to be dropped on Normandy for D-Day (Operation Overlord) are the Pathfinders. These men (and for the sake of my story - some women) are grouped into teams. They are dropped into enemy territory without initial marking and are then tasked with drop zones (DZ) and landing zones (LZ) before the arrival of the Airborne fighting companies.
